Sports

Five sports-loving and civic-minded Massachusetts teenagers are
canvassing high school coaches in their state in an effort to connect
some of their 125,000 uninsured peers to health coverage.

The Coaches Campaign, a program started in recent months by the
teenagers through the Boston-based advocacy group Health Care for All,
will enlist high school coaches and athletes to help spread the word
about new health-care programs available to Massachusetts youths. These
include a $227.6 million expansion of the state Medicaid program
announced by acting Gov. Paul Cellucci in July.

Beginning this winter, the athletes will travel from school to
school holding workshops, performing skits, and giving coaches and
athletic directors fact-filled pamphlets and posters.

"Coaches and athletes are a great target group," said campaign
participant Molly Kay Marra, a sophomore at Boston Latin School and an
avid soccer player. Because coaches require their players to undergo
physical exams, she said, the organizers figured that the medical forms
coaches pass out would be "a great place for them to slap on a little
brochure" explaining the assortment of free and subsidized health
programs available in Massachusetts.

Health Care for All dreamed up the campaign last year when, while
researching the state's Medicaid program, the group learned that many
adolescents were deciding not to play competitive sports because they
lacked health coverage and feared that, if injured, the high costs of
medical care would burden their families, said Allison Staton, a policy
associate at the advocacy organization.

Since the passage of the state's new Health Care Access Law, which
expands eligibility for Medicaid to all boys and girls 18 and younger
in families with incomes up to double the poverty level, more than
two-thirds of the state's children will qualify for free health
coverage.

Still, Ms. Staton said, a major challenge lies ahead in connecting
qualified young people to the new program. Athletic coaches, she said,
seem an obvious--and untapped--resource.

"Teenagers are a difficult group to reach," she said. "We wanted to
bring in a new group to help with outreach."

Jerry Knight, the athletic director for Somerville High School
outside Boston, said health coverage is "a real problem" for many of
his school's students.

"Any resource that will help students take advantage of what's out
there is a good thing."